Real. Guitar.

Archive for February, 2017

No, sorry folks, but this isn’t a review of the pedal. However, it does seem promising. Not just a regular overdrive that’s patterned off the TubeScreamer or Klon, but something with an entirely different voice. On top of that, it has two independent overdrive channels that can be run in parallel or stacked and it has a variety of tone-shaping knobs for a practically endless list of overdriven tone possibilities.

All this sounds great, BUT the only good reviews I’ve seen of this pedal have been with people playing Strats. I did find one done with a Les Paul, but though the demonstrator was good, the sound quality of his review was horrid, and how it sounds with a Les Paul is important to me because that’s my main axe.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of a Strat. I have two of them. But I find it strange that the reviews are so skewed with Stratocasters that it makes me think: Just how good is this pedal if few are demonstrating it with a Les Paul? Even Greenchild’s own video demo is predominantly focused on a Strat.

The Premier Guitar review of the pedal wasn’t totally complementary, with the reviewer saying that he didn’t like the high-end sizzle the pedal produces. Myself, I like that if it’s not overdone.

TheGearPage.net doesn’t even have that many threads on the pedal, with about half them being “for sale” posts. The demos didn’t get that much activity either. Strange.

Is it because the market is saturated with drive pedals? Or is it something else? I don’t know…

Normally, I don’t post this sort of article, but the apparent lack of response to this pedal got me wondering. I guess time will only tell…

Before I share my own thoughts, I’d like to share an email I got this morning from MusicTrades.com. It’s a trade rag magazine that puts out email digests. I normally ignore them, but the title of the article caught my eye, and I thought I’d pass it along after I read it. Here it is in its entirety:

Rosewood, And Why Trust In Government Is Low

ACCORDING TO A RECENT PEW SURVEY, only 19% of U.S. citizens trust the Federal government to do the right thing most of the time, the lowest level in 50 years of polling. The explanations for this are varied and complex, but a gathering of industry execs and members of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Fish & Wildlife Service at NAMM offered insights into the source of the low esteem. Early morning events at NAMM are usually sparsely attended unless there’s a free breakfast involved. This one, however, was standing room only, and with good reason. At issue were three-week-old regulations governing the import and export of rosewood, a staple raw material for instrument makers. Distributors and manufacturers crowded into a small meeting room, looking to government agencies in charge for guidance on how to comply and avoid the law’s onerous penalties. To their disappointment, the official response could be summed up as, “we’re working on it, and we’ll get back to you at some unspecified date.”

Drafted by the United Nations Conference on International Trade In Endangered Species (CITES), the new rosewood regulations stem from a laudable effort to prevent excessive cutting of rosewood. Over the last decade, demand for rosewood furniture in China has led to deforestation in places like Madagascar, Indonesia, and parts of Central America. In response, at the CITES Conference in South Africa last October, all species of rosewood (there are more than 250 varieties, but no one seems to agree on exactly how many) were placed on the CITES Appendix II, requiring more rigorous import and export documentation. Under the new rules, an instrument manufacturer has to document a legal chain of custody for any rosewood, from the time the tree was cut, until the raw wood was delivered to its loading dock. Every finished product containing rosewood needs a similar chain of custody documentation in order to be shipped across borders legally.
Less than three months elapsed between the time CITES adopted the new rosewood regulations and the day they were put into effect, leaving few if any of the 100-plus countries that are signatories to the treaty remotely prepared to implement them. CITES-compliant forms have yet to be drafted, port procedures are a work in process, and details like the “personal effects exemption” remain to be worked out. What documents are needed to legally cross borders with a 50-year-old guitar that has a rosewood fingerboard? No one is entirely sure.

For the industry, the resulting uncertainty has caused paralysis. Unable to secure proper documentation from countries including India or China, containers of finished instruments and raw materials are stacking up on the docks. No distributor we know of wants to risk having a container confiscated, incurring fines, or getting skewered as “against the environment.” U.S. guitar makers face the double challenge of being unable to legally secure rosewood or properly document their products for export. Thus, factories have slowed, and inventory is building up.

Complicating the issue, India, a major source of rosewood, wants no part of the new rules. The country’s established rosewood industry has a reputation for careful forest management: Trees are systematically planted to provide shade for tea plants in commercial plantations; rosewood is plentiful; all cutting is managed under a strict government permitting process. For the 100,000-plus Indians employed in dealing with rosewood, there’s a sense that they are being unfairly punished for the transgressions of other nations.

The incomplete regulations carry real human consequences. Those working in an export department are likely to see reduced commissions; factory workers will have their hours reduced; increased compliance costs will erode profits. The larger manufacturers can work through these issues by assigning staff to cope with the expanded paperwork, but the hundreds of smaller builders represented at NAMM are faced with the prospect of foregoing the use of rosewood, abandoning export markets, or both. When confronted with these issues, government officials reacted with the same sense of urgency you’d expect from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

In their defense, they are not entirely to blame. The new CITES regs were drafted behind closed doors by anonymous U.N. officials, with little or no time for public review or comment. As a result, APHIS and Fish & Wildlife officials seem almost as confused by the new rules as the community of instrument makers. They also feel besieged, given that, collectively, they have a staff of just seven to sort through the mess. What distressed industry members at the NAMM meeting, though, was the absence of any official sympathy for their plight. The unspoken message was, “The unintended consequences of the rules we draft are not our concern; our intentions are good.” In the private sector, though, people faced with mortgages, tuition bills, and payrolls to meet, don’t have that luxury. They can’t just wave away these commitments, saying, “A technocrat far away whipped up these new rules that have impacted my income, but give me a break because the intent is good.”

The fact that these new rules have been so poorly crafted may help speed resolution. Car makers, the furniture industry, and a multitude of houseware suppliers have also been adversely impacted, making for a coalition potentially large enough to command some attention. In a perfect world, though, we’d suggest another solution: dock the rule drafters’ salaries until a more workable draft is completed.

Almost all my guitars have rosewood fretboards, and my dream acoustic guitar will be built entirely of “shipwreck” Brazilian rosewood from a shipwreck off the coast of Brazil in 1936 (or other salvaged Brazilian). I love the feel of a rosewood fretboard, and I love the tones rosewood produces; in particular, with acoustic guitars.

But I’m also environmentally sensitive. So while it appears the CITES regulations have a clear intent, and also realizing like any legislation produced in a vacuum is bound to be flawed, I’m willing to forego my desire for something made with materials from an endangered species. Of course, the exception is the Indian rosewood which is sustainably produced.

What’s happened with the deforestation in Honduras and Madagascar needs to be severely scaled back, if not completely eradicated. I know, we’re talking people’s livelihoods, but though I’m not a “tree-hugger,” I’d still like to leave a legacy of love for the Earth with my descendants.

Circling back to the title of this article: Is there a viable alternative to rosewood? I’ll answer it however tritely with: It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you pick up an instrument and it speaks to you. For instance, I absolutely LOVE my Squier Classic Vibe Tele. It has a pine body, for chrissake!

I was having a discussion about gear with a friend. For years, he has played through a cheap solid-state amp, and lately, he has been looking to get a tube amp. So he asked me for some advice. I gave my standard answer of “you have to play a lot of amps.” But I directed him towards some entry-level models that would serve him well. He’s in a reggae band, and since reggae is mostly clean, I told him to start with looking a Fender and Fender-ish amps.

But I also cautioned him that he should make his decision purely on how we felt about the sound the amp produces and not get into whether or not the amp is wired point-to-point or if its circuits are printed on a board. The ONLY thing that matters is the sound. As Duke Ellington was once quoted saying, “If it sounds good, it is good.”

Wow! Ten years! It is hard to believe that GuitarGear.org has been around that long! What’s even more amazing is that despite having had lapses in posting, I’m actually still adding content after all this time.

I thought about what I might write for this momentous occasion and played around with several ideas but in the end, decided to share a few thoughts on what I’ve learned over 10 years of writing this blog.

I’ll bullet-point the items to not place any particular priority on them:

There is no substitution for personal experience. I can’t count the number of times people have said I should try something, or that some gear is the best out there, or I see some video or audio demonstration claiming the same. I’ve made the mistake of buying gear sight-unseen based upon that free advice (no matter how sincere), and been disappointed – many times. Now, if I hear something great online, or hear about something via word-of-mouth, I will make an effort to try to test it out. If I can’t get demo it, I won’t get it.

By the way, if I could only choose one thing to write about, this point would be it. So if you don’t want to read the whole article and still want to take something away, this is the point to remember.

Don’t get sucked into the hype. Dumble, Klon, etc. People pay top-dollar for that equipment. Is it good? No doubt about it. I’ve played a Dumble. Haven’t played a Klon. But are they actually that good that you’d be willing to spend thousands of dollars for one? Hey! If you have the means, more power to you. But going back to my first point, use your ears and be honest before shelling out the money to get something like that. That said, I paid almost $300 to get a Boss CE-2 Chorus; something I paid $69 for back in the early 80’s. But I sold it, and decades later, wanted that sound again. But having experience with it I didn’t balk at the price I had to pay. It was worth it. Funny thing though is that I only use it in my home studio because I don’t want it to get ruined by gigging it too much. 🙂

The only thing that a high sticker price guarantees is… well… A high sticker price. If you go on gear forums, you’ll see many people essentially brag about having such and such gear and share how much they paid for it (this especially rings true for boutique pedals), and express just how much better it makes them sound. The implication is that the higher price makes that particular gear so much better than others in its class. I’ve learned to chuckle about that because as many other people say, “Your mileage may vary.” I myself have several boutique pedals, and I’ve paid top-dollar for some, such as my beloved Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay, or my hauntingly smooth Homebrew Electronics THC Chorus. But then again, I had the opportunity to try them out before I purchased them. I know, I keep going back to the first item, but it’s the “bigly” one.

Trust your fingers to build your own sound. No, you don’t sound like Eddie Van Halen. No, you don’t sound like Robben Ford. No, you don’t sound like John Mayer. So I guess you’ll just have to settle sounding like yourself because the only fingers you have are your own. I know that people – myself included – like to buy the same gear as their guitar heroes. I bought a few of Satch’s pedals when they came out. But I love those pedals – especially my Big Bad Wah – because of what I can do with them. For instance, I saw an interview with Satch describing the wah pedal and at the time, I was looking to replace my Cry Baby. My first thought wasn’t, “Wow! If I got this, I could sound like Satch!” Actually, my reaction was much more mundane and I thought, Hmmm… I wonder it this will work? So I went down to Guitar Center to try it out once they had it and fell in love with it, and it has never left my board.

You see, and this especially goes for those starting out buying gear, you’ll eventually learn that your TONE is yours and yours alone because of the fingers you have and the combination of the gear your possess. If you’re looking to develop a sound, it can only be yours. For instance, a few years ago, I was on a board where people were talking about getting that EVH “brown sound.” There was a lot of discussion on how to achieve that until one dissenter said that there’s no way you’ll get there because what you hear on the recording has been processed with EQ, compression, reverb, etc. There’s no way to know what the mixing board settings were, nor how the guitar parts were mastered and trying to get that in a live rig was folly. He then backed that up with one important message: You don’t have EVH’s fingers!

So trust your own fingers, and build your own sound.

The journey in finding the right gear is important. But recognize that it’s a journey. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a shitload of gear that you never use. GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) is real. You see a demo or hear a recording of a guitar, amp or pedal, and you start jonesing to get your hands on one. Or… if you have the funds, you just buy it. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that. But before you know it, you will have spent thousands upon thousands on gear, and you’ll look back and say one day and say, “Shit! I gotta get rid of some of this…” I used to have over 20 guitars. But I’ve sold off most of them to where I now only have the 4 that I play regularly.

But I know of a guy who tragically passed away at a young age who never got over his GAS. My buddy purchased all his gear and literally filled up his two covered racecar haulers!

The point to this is that as you’re buying gear, do your best – and I know this is very difficult – to be calculating about your purchases, and how that particular gear will fit with you and your sound. I do have to say that at the present, at least for me, it’s much easier to have self-control with pedals. A bit harder are amps, and probably the most difficult are guitars. Luckily with the high-priced items, I have a natural barrier to entry, and that’s budget. But if I had the means, I’d go out right now and get a Gretsch Brian Setzer. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always difficulty controlling my GAS with guitars, which is how I ended up with over 20.

And even though pedals are much, much cheaper, I’ve found my sound, so I’m pretty picky about what I put in my chain, and that’s the crux of this particular point. Buying gear to me has been a journey in developing my own sound. The journey never ends, because I’ll tweak things here and there. But recognizing that it is a journey has helped me constantly take stock of the things I purchase and how they might affect my tone.

Well, so as not to sound self-serving on this momentous day, I’d like to wish all of you who have followed GuitarGear.org over the years just one thing: ROCK ON!

I’ve sung the praises of my 1958 Fender Champ in the past, and as I use it regularly, my opinion of the amp hasn’t changed. The Champ has been on several recordings of famous artists through the years, and it’s no small wonder why: With a Champ, it really is WYSIWYG as far as sound is concerned. But consider this: The downfall of a WYSIWYG device is that it exposes all your mistakes as well. That can be a little unsettling.

With my bigger amps where I invariably use a pedal board, I can hide a bit behind effects. But with a little bare-bones amp like the Champ, there’s no running; there’s nowhere I can hide. If I mess up, oh, I know it.

But I force myself to use this amp at band practice because playing it makes me so much more disciplined in my playing. It’s not that I limit myself and stop exploring. What it actually makes me do is get the most out each note that I play. It makes me slow down my thinking and it forces me to feel my strings and see if I can push notes; makes me hold bends and wiggle them a bit more to see if I can eek out more expression when I play.

Mind you, I’m no Vai or Satch. My band plays classic rock, so it’s mostly 3-chord songs. And while it’s easy to fall into a minor pentatonic for leads, I try to get outside the box as much as I can. It may not be fast, but with an amp like the Champ, I can’t afford to go too fast. Even with a tube rectifier, there’s little sag, so the sustain I put into my notes is the sustain I get. Ultimately, when I play through my actual gigging amp – either an Aracom VRX22 or DV Mark Little 40 – the time I spend developing dynamics with the Champ pay off.

I had a similar experience with an old Ovation that I had. I played that one at literally thousands of gigs. The action got a little high, and the frets were worn down, and I almost had to fight with it, but I worked that guitar to eek out every bit of tone that I could. Having played that for years, once I moved to a much better acoustic or switching over to electric, I felt that I was so much more expressive on my guitars because of that years-long experience of working my notes.

And though I don’t play fast, I found that playing through such a plain amp has helped me develop my speed. With this amp, it’s all about clean headroom. It won’t break up unless I totally crank it, and even at just 5 Watts, it can be loud. Plus being as old as it is, I don’t want to push it too much. So I play it clean. With respect to developing speed, this amp forces me to make sure that my hands are in sync. When I first started using it for practice, I realized that I had developed some bad habits and my hands were not in sync and that I had to slow down my solos – a lot. After practicing with the Champ for awhile, I found that I could speed up a bit more as my hands got more in sync.

The point to all this is that if you have some gear that makes you work for it, use it to develop your expression and dynamics. You might even have to fight with it at times. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Besides music and golf, another passion I have – though nowhere near the level of the former – is wine. I’m not a collector, but I keep a modest amount of great bottles in my small wine cooler. But apart from the wine itself, I love keeping up to date with what’s going on in the wine industry, so I’ve subscribed to some magazines: Both physical and digital. In particular, I have a subscription to “Wine Spectator” which, to me, is the standard in wine industry coverage.

A couple of days ago, as I was perusing the through the latest issue of Wine Spectator, I ran across a column in which the author shared how he was cleaning up his office and ran across his tax forms going back over twenty years, and looked at his itemized deductions; especially those expenses related to wine, and that led to a short discussion on what kinds of wines he had purchased for both work and personal consumption. But one thing the author said really struck home with me.

Near the end of the article he said that had he not spent all the money he had on wine, he’d probably be much better off financially today. But had he not made those purchases, he would have missed out on everything that he had learned over the years. That one statement got me thinking about the guitar gear that I’ve purchased over the years, and how, at least for me, much of it reflects my personal journey in both music and the gear that I use.

In that respect, when I look back on all the money I’ve spent on gear, which literally runs into the tens of thousands, I could’ve invested that money and, like the author, be much better off financially. Instead, I made an investment myself and my passion for making music. Had I not purchased all that gear (I’ve sold off most of it, by the way), I don’t think I would have grown nearly as much I have as a musician.

For me, the gear I’ve purchased – and sold – are a direct reflection of where I’ve been on my personal musical journey. I’ve seriously gone through a lot of gear. Just looking back over my rig configuration five years ago, and compare it to what it is today. I just smile at how I’ve arrived at my current place.

GuitarGear.org itself is a marker. In fact, tomorrow, February 14, 2017, will mark GuitarGear.org’s 10th anniversary. I started it as an online diary of moving into the tube amp world, and to put my thoughts down on what I was feeling and the philosophies I’d develop. Yet it morphed into something so much more than that. Yes, I still share my thoughts as I am now, but who knew I’d do reviews and in the process connect with so many different people!

A couple of days ago, I wrote an article about how James Taylor tunes his guitars, utilizing the “cents” on the tuner to compensate for the shape of an acoustic guitar, and how the bass notes ring sharper than their tuning, and also to compensate for a capo pulling the strings sharp. Here’s the video for a refresher:

At the end of the article, I said I’d try it out and I’ll be damned if it didn’t sound good both with and without a capo!

My test of a tuning is always to play a root E chord after I tune my guitar. Usually, I get to the exact tuning, then end up tuning strings a little down because the E chord just doesn’t sound right. So I suppose I’ve been doing this by feel all these years. But now I have a fool-proof, sure-fire, and most importantly, a measurable way of tuning that I can repeat.

If you don’t want to watch the whole video, here’s the tuning (high to low):

E -3
B -6
G -4
D -8
A -10
E -12

Values are in negative cents. For my guitar, a full -12 cents on the low E sounds slightly off, so I end up using -10 to -11 (I know, it’s a tiny amount, but I can hear it). But I set the rest of the strings as directed.

As they say, it’s the little things in life… I’m nothing short of amazed at how this small adjustment makes a world of difference.

…the more I appreciate his virtuosity with the guitar. “This guy” happens to be Eric Rachmany of Rebelution, and he’s absolutely amazing.

If you’re familiar with Rebelution, you know that they’re a reggae band out of Isla Vista, CA. And you might think, “It’s reggae – all um-chuck, um-chuck. How hard could it be?”

Admittedly, most reggae is like that. But Eric, like so many other modern reggae guitarists, are completely changing this. The rhythmic foundation is still “um-chuck.” But Eric plays rhythm lines over the rhythmic foundation. And the kicker is that he DOES THIS WHILE SINGING!!!

Check out one of my favorite Rebelution tunes, called “Closer I Get.” It’s a perfect example of Eric’s virtuosity.

Look, I can play all those lines that he plays with relative ease. The base 1-4-5 pattern in Fm is a standard minor blues, and his minor pentatonic pattern is pretty straightforward. I can play it all. But to be able to sing over it is an entirely different matter. Also, bear in mind that that’s just one song. He does this with most of their songs.

I do about 5 or 6 Rebelution covers in my solo gigs, and the only thing I can say is this: Thank goodness I have a looper. 🙂 After 46 years of playing, I’m a pretty decent guitarist, and while I can sing over some rhythm lines, what makes this and other songs particularly difficult to sing over is that the melody lines are often syncopated and attack or play off the beat. I can play lead lines when the melodies are on the beat, no problem. But this is pretty hard. That said, it has inspired me to practice and master being able to sing over rhythm lines like this.

The video doesn’t necessarily show his virtuosity on the guitar. It shows quite a bit. You’d have to see Rebelution live to really “get” what I’m talking about. His phrasing and timing are impeccable. And while he sticks primarily to a pentatonic root with his solos, his expression with passing notes and bends belie the simplicity of the scale. The point is that when he plays, he really makes music, and communicates his message. And that’s what it’s about for me.

As I’ve shared with younger guitarists whom I’ve mentored over the years: You don’t need tricks. You don’t need gimmicks. All you need is a message. Just let your fingers do the talking. Then I go on explaining: If a dive bomb will get the message across, go for it; the same thing goes for tapping. You could do all the tricks in the world, and show off your technique, but if you don’t pull all that stuff together to actually say something, then your solo is the equivalent of a garbled mess. Besides, an effective solo is as much as what you don’t play as it is what you play. Think about it.

Then even though I’m not really all that into Jazz, I do like particular artists, so I’d tell them to go on YouTube and listen to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Talk about communicating a message. In particular, I tell them to listen to Miles Davis’ “Blue in Green.” There’s a certain sparseness in how Miles plays that song.

By the way, listening to Miles Davis wasn’t my idea. I actually got that several years ago from an elderly black gentleman named Patrick that I met at the restaurant I’ve worked at for 16 years running. He was an old jazz player who had played with some big names in his heyday, and amazingly enough, he used to enjoy coming in to hear me play. During breaks, I’d go and talk to him, and one time I shared that I wanted to better at improv. He just told me this: “Go listen to Miles Davis. That man can do more with one note than a lotta guys can do with a hundred.” I listened and was transformed.

After awhile, I realized that despite the fact that I couldn’t shred or play super-complicated lines, I could use what I could play just so long as I communicated my message.

Circling back to Eric Rachmany, the guy doesn’t do any tricks at all. There are some places where he might sweep pick, but that’s not really a trick. That just takes practice. Eric is someone who’s always in the pocket, and what he plays always makes sense. To me, that’s the sign of a great musician.